[HN Gopher] Losing our product to button syndrome ___________________________________________________________________ Losing our product to button syndrome Author : hrishi Score : 48 points Date : 2022-01-12 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (olickel.com) (TXT) w3m dump (olickel.com) | webel0 wrote: | On my iPhone 6 with safari I'm just seeing an error message: | | > Application error: a client-side exception has occurred. | | But from the other comments I get the impression that "button | syndrome" has something to do with UX/accessibility. Tad ironic. | polyterative wrote: | An excellent article | vba616 wrote: | I'm not sure I saw the basic yin/yang tension explicitly | described that I would like to see. | | Back in the 80s, the earliest Mac interface guidelines said | something to the effect of "eschew modes". There were lots of | reasons for that. Some argue that as more people are familiar | with computers, it's reasonable for the standards of good | design to change. | | But. Gigantic numbers of buttons are kind of a consquence of | avoiding modes. | | I don't think I need to reiterate all the bad things about | modes, because quite a few were mentioned in the article, | including life and death situations with military aircraft. | | Quote: "segment our interface into a much larger number of | smaller pages, each of which serves a specific function" - | those are modes! | | There's no right answer, and the article covers a lot of the | ground, but I think the end of it is unbalanced, because it's | fundamentally about a duality with no resolution, where | intelligent people have argued for the opposite of the final | advice. | | There's nothing really wrong with the article, except it avoids | the keyword that connects to significant history that shows | both sides have merit. "Mode" is not used once. | | The older I get, the more depressing it is when I see someone | rediscovering something without recognizing it. | ricardobayes wrote: | also a lot of fluff. Lenghty tirade about flight controls and | linking a 1-hour flight lesson didn't help brevity/clarity. | jimjimjim wrote: | pour a drink, sit back and have a read | nine_k wrote: | Captain, it's Wednesday. | vulcan01 wrote: | Brevity is not the only goal in writing. If the author had | not provided an analogue in another field, it would not have | been engaging. | phillipcarter wrote: | I think I want to agree with this article, but I found it a | little confusing. | | In particular, I think it's strange to compare the F-16 with the | F-35 when the former is regarded to be one of the best fighter | jets ever made and the F-35 is infamous for being problematic. My | understanding is that they are also different kinds of planes for | different purposes, but at any rate, I struggle to focus on UX | when there's that contextual elephant in the room. | draw_down wrote: | corndoge wrote: | I know this isn't the point of the article but the supposed F16 | cockpit in this article is an F15 cockpit. The F16 has a | sidestick, mfds and the canopy has no support arch. | luhn wrote: | I think it's worth talking about a couple downsides of a search- | based interface: | | Speed: Search-based puts a floor on how fast an interaction can | be. "Button Syndrome" interfaces are a slow "hunt and peck" for | new users, but experienced users can use them extremely fast, | building up muscle memory so they don't even need to consciously | think about the action they're taking. Imagine piloting an F35 | with a search-based interface. | | Discoverability: Buttons make it explicit what functionality is | offered by the product... somewhat. Users may not know exactly | what a button does, but they can make an educated guess based on | labeling and context, and it gives them a jumping off point to | experiment with it or find it in the documentation. With search- | base interfaces, there's no natural way for a user to discover | functionality they aren't aware of. Worse, a user may remember a | function exists but forget the terminology, flailing in the | search box guessing different terms. | | This is not to say search-based interfaces are bad. There are | mitigations to the downsides (the article mentions a few, like | search suggestions), plenty of upsides to go along with it, and | let's not pretend that button-based interfaces are all sunshine | and rainbows. I only mean to say that these are things that | should be considered. | | I think the broader takeaway of the article is: Always be | thinking holistically. It's important to consider how your users | interact with your product as a whole, not just the individual | features. Also important to consider how different users of | varying experience with the product and the domain will feel with | the UI--Often features for "power users" come at the expense of | new users or vice versa. | autoexec wrote: | I'd add data collection/privacy concerns that list too. "search | suggestions" seem great until you see that often every letter | you type is being sent over the wire for analytics and to mine | for personal info to sell to 3rd parties. The site even | mentions how useful it is for them to see what people are | searching for. I don't know anyone who hasn't ever typed or | pasted data somewhere they didn't mean to and it's painfully | easy for sensitive data to get leaked this way. | | That concern won't apply everywhere, but it's worth keeping in | mind. Even when my interactions with a simple menu are recorded | (for analytics/profit) and reported the amount of data they get | is at least limited. | ddingus wrote: | My favorite compromise is a search that takes a user right to | the button, and or can initiate whatever it is. | | Each search is an opportunity to build experience needed to use | search less. | | The buttons are there for those who want to run fast and or | efficiently. | | Doing that well is a lot of work, but it also delivers high | value. | | Going search only can be super lean, which has to be | compelling. Everything costs something though, and the cost | here is no user becomes adept. There is a permanently fairly | high Ccost of interaction. | KennyBlanken wrote: | > My favorite compromise is a search that takes a user right | to the button, and or can initiate whatever it is. | | This is how MacOS X's help menu search box has worked for | over a decade, and it's brilliant. Type in a search and it | shows you every menu item that matches, and rolling down the | list shows you live where each menu item is. | | I wish Spotlight search was similar - showing paths more | readily, and making it easier to open the folder that | contains the item that you want to look at. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | It's not just button syndrome. Lots of companies continuously | fail their users in terms of just being to able to perform basic | functionality while marketing themselves as world-changing, good- | doing champions for people. | | Being a developer, I'm one of the main points of contact in my | family whenever a relative can't figure out how to do something | software-related, and boy has it been a sobering look into the | future. | | I recently helped a relative file for unemployment verification | through ID.me, which is a popular identity verification platform. | My relative, who is not well off financially, had an old phone | that didn't play nicely at all with the ID.me verification flow. | I spent an hour trying to get my relative signed up and I never | could get it to work. The site was barely mobile-friendly, and | the photo upload process kept failing, which was a required step | for verification. | | It was so Orwellian to see this kind of UX on a device that | wasn't new (and of course, how is someone on unemployment | expected to purchase a new phone?) I truly wonder how many people | have starved because they didn't have access to devices that | allowed them to collect their unemployment through this platform. | It really kept me up that night. | mschuster91 wrote: | > It was so Orwellian to see this kind of UX on a device that | wasn't new (and of course, how is someone on unemployment | expected to purchase a new phone?) I truly wonder how many | people have starved because they didn't have access to devices | that allowed them to collect their unemployment through this | platform. It really kept me up that night. | | It may be disheartening to hear, but this is _by design_. A | (Western) government cannot get away with _entirely_ not | providing or dismantling basic elements of a social safety net | (unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance, disability | assistance) for publicity reasons... but what _perfectly_ works | is to make the system as complex and hoop-jumping-dependent as | possible to reduce the number of claims: | | - requiring modern devices (or not making sure that older | devices work too, like you witnessed) is a major hurdle many | people who are too poor and under-served by libraries or other | public Internet access | | - requiring in-person presence with short opening hours during | weekdays discriminate against people who have to take care of | sick relatives/children, have to work two or more jobs or have | certain mental health issues that make following up with | appointments very difficult (e.g. some of the strains of | autism) | | - requiring specific forms of ID or other paper documents (e.g. | birth certificates) can be almost impossible (or, very | expensive) to solve for people who have lost their | belongings/are homeless | | - requiring proof of residence is an automatic exclusion of the | homeless | | - complex forms with bureaucratic language discriminate against | illiterate people, non-English speakers and frankly, most | people who don't know or can't afford a lawyer to help them out | | - automatically rejecting the first claim and only allowing | after an appeal / a lawsuit is _commonplace_ for disability | claims, it is very effective in "weeding out" poor and already | troubled people | | The ones that _do not_ require a lot of bureaucracy are not | governments... the void that helps those left behind by | governmental bureaucracy is more often than not religiously | affiliated: churches, Salvation Army, other charities - but | unlike government (which is theoretically bound by | constitutions and anti-discrimination laws), they are free to | choose whom they help and how much. | | And now: good luck if you're a publicly outed LGBT member, a | person of color or otherwise marginalized person right in a | religious-conservative stronghold. The government won't help | you as you can't jump the hoops that were designed to be that | way, and the "private sector" won't help you as you are not | mainstream conformant. _This_ threat is what makes | dysfunctional government bureaucracy so insidious. | soco wrote: | They invest a bit in the initial development then call it a | day. Another example is the chatbots fad: after the technology | implementation there's almost no energy for actually training | those bots, so you as user are served with a fancy and | overpriced menu system. | MattGaiser wrote: | That isn't realistically fixable unless companies are really | willing to invest a lot more in testing. Most companies don't | even have any user testing for products beyond what devs do on | their own machines. | alistairSH wrote: | For a government service, testing of older/lower performance | devices should be part of the initial contract. | MattGaiser wrote: | It often is, but will be tested to a "yes, it is | technically possible" level. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | I realize that, it just put the entire software industry into | perspective for me. We are building products for users that | can afford to interface with them, and even then, it's not a | guarantee that you're gonna get a great experience. | | Here's to hoping that neither you or I ever become that | irrelevant, because that doesn't look like a pretty existence | to me. | vpilcx wrote: | I had the exact same experience. A barely smart phone being | used to verify ID and we had to do the facial recognition more | than 10 ten times, each time having to go through a whole step | by step process to get there. And it still didn't work. I think | he had to go an entirely different route in order to even do | it. If he didn't have someone like me who could think | systematically, there's no way he by himself or any non- | technically minded person would be able to do it. | CGamesPlay wrote: | To be fair, public libraries generally have computers suitable | for this purpose. | mschuster91 wrote: | For that you have to be living in proximity to one and be | able to afford the time and money to get there. | | Access to government services should be a _right_ accessible | to _everyone_ , not just the select few that can jump through | intentional hoops! | teddyh wrote: | _If there were a science of user interaction, its second law | could be called the Wide Angle Fallacy. When a disgusted user | goes back to the designer saying, "Your system doesn't perform | the special function I need," the designer's ego is deeply | affected. To regain the good graces of his customer--and to re- | establish his self-esteem--the designer is likely to answer, "I | can fix it in no time. I will just add another command for you."_ | | _Later, the same man will be seen at conventions, meetings and | workshops, extolling the virtues of his system, the "power" of | which can be measured by the great number of commands it can | execute. I believe this is usually a fallacy and users should | recognize it as such._ | | -- Jacques Vallee, _The Network Revolution: Confessions of a | Computer Scientist_ (1982) chapter six, _Obfuscatology_ | (https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC) | eitland wrote: | No software I can think of has been ruined for me because of | getting too advanced. | | To particular pieces of software has lost _a lot_ of their | utility for me thanks to dumbification: | | - Google I have now given up. It was equally dumb as DDG when I | last used it and the only reason I sometimes fell back to it | was to see if it randomly provided a useful result. | | - Firefox is still the best for me but is a shadow of its | former self. I'm eagerly waiting for a fork and on Mac I have | already switched to Orion which has built in vertical tabs, can | fix ctrl-tab and support both FF and Chrome extensions. (My | main criteria is: 1. works great 2. not Chrome- or Chromium- | based) | autoexec wrote: | Bloat and feature creep are real (and I'd accuse Firefox of | both) but in general yes, I'd rather have more functionality | and a complex interface than have features stripped away or | hidden behind some search box where I have to know exactly | what I want and hope the app can guess at what I'm asking | for. | eitland wrote: | Agree to a large degree, but this: | | > Bloat and feature creep are real (and I'd accuse Firefox | of both) but in general yes[...] | | Except Pocket, what particular new bloat has Firefox added | over the last decade? | | I am not too fond of Mozilla myself, but if anything I feel | like Firefox has been stripped down way to far. | Jtsummers wrote: | There's a distinction to be made between "capable but not | overwhelming", "capable and overwhelming", "incapable but not | overwhelming", and "incapable but still overwhelming". The | first two can both describe advanced systems without | dumbification, but the user experience is qualitatively | different and can lead to wildly different outcomes when put | into use. | | You can have an "advanced" (whatever it may mean in context) | system which fits into the first two categories, which is | very useful to remember. Something I like is command prompts | in the style of emacs accessed via M-x and similar shortcuts | (or in VS Code, which many more people are familiar with). | These permit discovery of new commands and activation of | commands without overwhelming the UI. They can also "teach" | the user, by providing information like what the keyboard | shortcut actually is for activating it. Contrast this with | something I've seen in many desktop projects (especially ones | targeting a smaller number of power users, versus a more | public system distributed to a broader user base): menu hell. | All those same commands are still there (maybe), but buried | in menus with submenus with submenus. Even though a command | may logically appear in multiple places, it probably only | appears in one. They may not even appear in a logical place, | but just a conventional one, like search commands showing up | under "Edit". | [deleted] | n8cpdx wrote: | He missed one of Office's key innovations - commands-on- | selection, which is now available on the web app as well. | | It reinforces the story even better than the given examples and | has been there since Office 2007. The web version just added | search-for-command in the right-click menu as well, which is | similarly powerful. | | This seems to be called the "mini toolbar". Very hard to Google, | easier to find through use. It is in Outlook for web now, too. | The version in word is more powerful, especially when working | with tables. | thaumasiotes wrote: | The OP doesn't actually describe what he thinks is wrong. | | > It isn't just us, here's Office 2003. | | > [image] | | > Here it is after the rebuild. | | > [image that is similar, but on a narrower screen] | | > To understand why - and to find a solution - the history of | software is helpful. | | Step back. To understand why _what_? To find a solution to | _what_? | pjerem wrote: | And the screenshot isn't even from MS Office 2003 but from ... | Kingsoft Office. | duxup wrote: | I found that confusing too, like I walked into the middle of an | existing conversation. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | I am not so sure that replacing physical fixed function buttons | with context sensitive buttons in a fighter is really a good | idea. | | If you look at the Navy, there have been several mishaps that | have been blamed on poor electronic controls. | | In addition, and likely more importantly, a fighter pilot trains | for hundreds of hours in their cockpit. They develop muscle | memory. Having a button at the same place, with the same feel, | that does the same thing, is likely vital when you are engaged | with an enemy fighter and don't want any extraneous distractions. | Instead, it seems you have the cockpit version of Apple's Touch | Bar. | alistairSH wrote: | Heck, I can't even consistently hit the correct touchpad- | buttons on my Honda's radio. I can't imagine trying to do the | same in stressful combat situations (both physically - high Gs | and speeds - and mentally). ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-12 23:00 UTC)